Consuming canine and cats banned in Home-passed invoice

Many pet-loving Individuals have been shocked to listen to this information, however solely six states — California, Georgia, Hawaii, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia — explicitly outlaw canine meat.

However members of the U.S. Home try to vary that.

They’ve simply handed laws that will outlaw the slaughter of canine and cats for meals, a transfer that can even function a sign to different international locations that Individuals condemn the canine and cat meat trades in East Asia, in response to the Washington Submit.

What’s extra, it’s a uncommon subject on which either side of the aisle agree.

The Invoice, by Republican Vern Buchanan and Democrat Alcee Hastings, each from Florida, would amend the federal Animal Welfare Act to ban the slaughter of canine and cats for human consumption in america. It was handed this week by voice vote.

The invoice makes it unlawful to knowingly slaughter, transport, possess, purchase, promote or donate canine or cats or their elements for human consumption. Violators can be fined as much as $5,000.

Photograph: Flickr/Yukari

“Canines and cats present love and companionship to tens of millions of individuals and shouldn’t be slaughtered and offered as meals,” Buchanan mentioned.

The Home additionally handed a non-binding decision urging different nations to finish the canine and cat meat commerce. Focused listed below are the governments of the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, India, China, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam and different nations to ban consumption of the animals. Final 12 months, Taiwan led the Asian cost, turned the primary to make the slaughter of canine and cats for human consumption unlawful.

“This invoice is a mirrored image of our values and offers us a higher standing in urging all different international locations to finish this horrific apply as soon as and for all,” Hastings mentioned.

Animal rights teams, lots of which have been lobbying exhausting for this alteration whereas saving slaughterhouse animals in far-flung elements of the world, have been thrilled, noting that there’s small underground U.S. marketplace for canine and cat meat.

Nationwide, it’s unlawful for slaughterhouses to deal with canine and cats, and for shops to promote the meat. However outdoors the abovementioned six, people are usually not prohibited from killing and consuming a canine or cat or promoting the meat to different individuals.